Intra species factors calculation
There is variation between individuals concerning their individual sensitivities to experience health effects. In some scenarios the aim is to perform assessments for the sensitive individuals instead of the average individuals for which the points of departure are derived. If this is the case, then extrapolation is required to translate hazard characterisations derived for the average individual to hazard characterisations for a sensitive individual.
Traditionally a fixed safety factor describes the variation between individuals. Little information is available about the true distribution of human sensitivities, so there is also a large uncertainty. In MCRA, the intra-species variability is modelled explicitly using a lognormal distribution, characterised by a geometric mean (GM) equal to 1 and a geometric standard deviation (GSD). This distribution is used to sample individual hazard characterisations. This effectively converts the description of hazard characterisations to include variability, with an unbiased central value. GM is 1 by definition (50% of the population is assumed to be less sensitive and 50% more sensitive than the average individual) and has no uncertainty. On the other hand, there is uncertainty about the GSD or SD = log(GSD). This uncertainty is described by a chi-square distribution with
where
It is difficult to specify values for GSD and
Assume that the p95-sensitive individuals are between e.g. 2 and 10 times more sensitive than the average human. The values 2 and 10 are to be interpreted as uncertainty bounds, the 2.5th and 97.5th percentiles of the uncertainty distribution for the
Then, p95-sensitive individuals are between
For the lognormal distribution we have:
And thus
A standard two-sided 95% confidence interval for
Equating the two lower bounds as well as the two upper bounds we obtain two equations with two unknowns. Substituting for SD and rearranging we find that
And then GSD can be calculated as:
A bisection algorithm can be used to find the value for
This value is attained for